Parade: Robert De Niro Can Do No Wrong

By Lee Child
Parade
Excerpt
November 8, 2009

Robert De Niro is very happy that it took him a little while to become a star.

"I think it's important to have had at least a few years of obscurity, where people treat you like everybody else," he says. "Then it goes crazy, and all of a sudden people behave differently toward you, they're agreeing with you all the time, they're not telling you no."

I've already told him no. As in, no, really, we don't have to do this now. Because I've just found out he's had a rough day. He was filming all night in Chicago, where he picked up a scratchy throat. "Some kind of dust from the trees they have there," he says with a city boy's puzzlement at things that grow in the ground?and then he jumped on a plane to New York and ran errands all morning and did a photo shoot and, get this, had dental surgery. He's an exhausted 66-year-old, full of novocaine. But in turn he tells me no. As in: "No, you have a deadline. I don't want to make you late. So, let's just do it."

See exclusive photos from PARADE's shoot with Robert De Niro

It's my first hint that here is a superstar who puts himself second, both personally and, as I soon find out, professionally. I've just been shown his new movie, Everybody's Fine, due out Dec. 4. It's a family drama about a widower who reconnects with his grown children. They end up around the table together for Christmas dinner. Standard holiday fare? Not even close. Mostly because of another standout performance by De Niro. I try to get him to take the credit. But he won't...

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